Here's testimony from one witness. The police sealed the building after raiding it. They claimed to have a warrant, but refused to show
it, which suggests they were lying.

The End of America, by Naomi Wolf, warned that the US had gone nearly
all the way towards a police state, and that the full-blown tyranny
only becomes unmistakably visible at the last stage. That last stage
may be now.

It might not be too late to defeat this monster, if the mass media
were to make a scandal. Obama could make this happen if he decides to
try. But I expect that they won't. The mass media are certainly part
of the monster, and Obama probably is too.

I would not put it past them. Saakashvili surely supplied the main
enthusiasm for the attack, but it is an interesting question
whether he needed to get permission from the US before he could launch
it.

It is common for the effect of a radioactive or poisonous substance to
depend on how it is ingested. For instance, a given dose of polonium
210 might be much more dangerous when breathed in than when swallowed,
or vice versa. The article does not say, but I doubt it causes lung
cancer when swallowed. If someone sends me the answer I will post it
here.

Exposing these crimes might very well interfere with future
collaboration on torture. That, of course, is why they should be
published — not merely provided in secret to the defense
lawyers.

What the Bush regime says is, in effect, "Don't let anyone know about
our crimes, because we deserve not to suffer the consequences of
them!" Any other criminal saying this would meet with derision. If
the US is to claim to have rule of law, courts must give the Bushmen
the same derision.

But that is not likely, given that this is a "military tribunal" which
does not meet the usual criteria for a fair trial.

Israeli settlers try to drive the Abu Kabaita family off its land by
killing or
stealing their sheep. The Israeli police support this campaign of
harassment by refusing to accept complaints from the family.

In Hebron, Israeli settlers attack Arabs
and their homes, and also attack the international monitors who
were placed there to discourage such attacks.

Thousands of children died in the Sichuan earthquake because their
schools were not properly built. China has used lies, travel bans, and
arrests to prevent them from being seen.

It makes me think of the way the Bush regime treats the 9/11 relatives
who want a real investigation of what happened on that day. In the US
and in China, the political system is rotten through and through.

In today's Iraq, the three ethnic/religious groups no longer live together;
the reason the violence has mosty ended is that each ethnically cleansed
certain territory. This resembles to a certain extent the solution that I and
later Biden proposed.

But my proposal included another element: to give each group a friendly
supporting army committed to reinforcing it in defense but not helping it
attack others. Currently the Shi'ites have the "Iraqi" army, and the Sunnis
have none. Thus they are afraid of a third stage of the war in which they
will be crushed.

Now that these two religious groups have come to hate and kill each
other, they will either have separate governments or one will conquer
and repress the other. In the past, the Sunnis under Saddam Hussein
repressed the Shi'ites, but did not need to kill tremendous numbers of
Shi'ites to do this. It won't be so easy now, I think.

To stop people from leaving a country is inexcusable injustice. The
Soviet Union and its puppet governments used to do this; today Israel
does this in Gaza, and Iran has put itself in the same category.

No one can predict what will happen to Pakistan in the future; every
political event there creates imponderable good and bad possibilities.
However, in ethical terms, his attempt to sack the independent
judiciary was an attack on democracy; if this means that the court's
legimate judges will return, it is a victory for democracy.

Although Georgia started the war and lost it, it is now winning
the PR battle to present itself as right.

But I don't think we can credit this solely to a PR agency.
Saakashvili is more or less a poodle of Bush, so he gets the US
government's PR assistance, and that probably includes secret inside
media help as well.

Hiu Ng was arrested by the Department of Homeland Security due to
its own confusion, then denied the chance to see a doctor to diagnose
what turned out to be cancer. When he became unable to walk, guards
dragged him on the ground. When he could not stand on line to receive
painkillers, he was denied them. He was forbidden to see his
US-citizen wife and children until a couple of days before he died.

Even if the plan to deport him had not been a mistake, it could not
justify this callous cruelty. And the government officials whose job
is to parrot claims that this sort of thing never happens are just as
guilty for covering this up as the people who did it.

This is to "fight crime", but crime is a minor danger compared with that
of an all-powerful all-seeing state. When the government declares suspicion
grounds to imprison someone, everyone has a valid reason to conceal his
activities from the state.

However, those claims are unconfirmed and could be exaggerated. Human
Rights Watch says that Russia is exaggerating
the casualty figures for Georgia's attack on South Ossetia, and is
concealing real data.

The critics of Russia point out that Georgia's attempt to reestablish
control over South Ossetia was quite analogous to Russia's two
reconquests of Chechnya. That is right: Russia's positions conflict
hypocritically.

Russia responds to this by pointing out that the US defense of
Georgia's "territorial integrity" conficts hypocritically with its
removal of Kosovo from Serbian control. That is right too, but
criticism of the US doesn't invalidate the criticism of Russia. Both
the US government and the Russian government are hypocrites, and
neither one can make itself honest just by criticizing the other.

So what about the substance of the issue? Since the South Ossetians
mostly would rather be part of Russia, I see no reason to force them
to be part of Georgia.

I have never before seen these claims about Iranian biological
weapons, and this article isn't enough to convince me of them. But
the claims about maneuvers and ship movements should be easy to check,
so I expect they are true.

After Israeli soldiers shot and killed a Palestinian child and a teenage
bystander during nonviolent protests in Ni'ilin, Israelis protested the
commander of the regiment, who has the responsibility to make sure his troops
do not commit atrocities. 23
protestors were arrested and badly beaten.

If filming from a helicopter was dangerous, it was right and proper
not to do it. There would be nothing wrong with broadcasting a
computer simulation instead, if it were labeled as such. The wrong
committed here was that of lying, and lying is characteristic of the
Chinese government.

After Georgian troops in South Ossetia were totally defeated by
Russian forces, Georgia says it withdrew them as a "humanitarian"
gesture. Will anyone believe that? But Russia rejected the
opportunity to declare victory, and is attacking
Georgia elsewhere.

Russia seems to have won this move, but the important point is that
neither Russia nor the US deserves anyone's support. Neither
government respects human rights. Both of them rig elections. Both
deserve defeat in their ambitions.

Arbitrarily excluding people from running for office is no better in
Venezuela than in Iran. If there is evidence to accuse these
candidates of corruption, they should be given fair trials and thus a
chance to clear their names.

CIA agent Rob Richer told Ron Susskind that he (Richer) circulated
a faked letter connecting Saddam Hussein with Al Qa'ida. After
Susskind's book appeared, Richer first said it was true, then denied
it. So Susskind published the text of Richer's interview where he
admitted this. The original text of the letter arrived on White House
letterhead.

It is absurd to punish anyone for having sex with someone of age 15
— it is normal for Americans of age 15 to have sex. But even if
he had committed a real crime, such as robbery, for which punishment
is appropriate, deporting someone who arrived in the US so young is
absurd.

It seems clear that Russia gave Russian citizenship to most South Ossetians as
a prelude to annexation. Citing that now as an excuse for intervention is
bogus.

It seems virtually certain that Georgia started the war. The attack it made
takes preparation, and the preparations must have started several days before
the start of the Olympics, timed for an attack on that day. If Georgia had
responded to a surprise attack by the South Ossetians on that day, it might
have counterattacked, but the counterattack would not have been so big.

I wonder whether Georgia asked Bush's permission before attacking. A
government so dependent on the US that it would send troops to the Bush forces
is compelled also to obey.

South Ossetian is obviously acting as a pawn of Russia, and I think it
likely that Georgia is acting as a pawn of the US, but I don't
understand the situation enough to have any further opinions about it.

Salim Hamdan was
convicted in a phony trial for the crime of being
Osama bin Laden's driver — under an ex-post-facto law,
which is explicitly unconstitutional. We cannot tell whether some
of the "evidence" was obtained by torture.

The Chinese spokesman pompously hopes people will "obey the laws of
China", but why should anyone do that? The tyrannical laws of China
deserve obedience just as much as the tyrannical laws of the US
— which is to say, not at all.

It is a strange reversal for an organization that once patriotically
fought the US-imposed Shah to work with the regimes of Saddam Hussein
and Bush that are clearly enemies of their country. It could be the
result of carrying a grudge too far, or it could be simple corruption.

The Bush forces reduced violence in Iraq by informally supporting tame
Sunni as well as Shi'ite militias. However, the Shi'ite militias are
called the "army" and "police", while the Sunni militias are not. And
the Shi'ite
militias are prepared to use that to reignite the massacres.

What Bush did is partially similar to what I called for two years ago,
but not entirely similar. My plan was to give both Shi'ites and
Sunnis non-Bush foreign military support to defend themselves. With
Bush's way, the Shi'ites have foreign military support and the Sunnis
do not.

Note how the police cite the "university authorities" as having decided that
Sabir is not allowed to study these materials, while these supposed
"authorities" duck their responsibility to defend academic freedom by saying
nothing and only citing the police.

Evidently the "university authorities'" decision has nothing to do with truth,
justice, or academic freedom, and merely represents obedience to the Sheriff
of Nottingham. This law, which prohibits possession of documents that "might
be useful" for terrorism, is nothing but a veiled way of imprisoning people on
suspicion.

The UK government is a bigger threat to Britons' lives than any
non-state-sponsored terrorist group, and what's worse, it attacks their
freedom as well.

As Mohammed Omer returned to Gaza after receiving an international
prize for journalism, Israeli border guards wanted to steal the prize
money. But he didn't have it on him, so they tortured
him instead.

I have no way of judging whether to believe either claim, but what is
most interesting is that the anthrax letters were very effective at
convincing Congress to pass the U SAP AT RIOT act which attacked human
rights in the US. If Ivins carried out the attacks, we will probably
never know whether someone such as Cheney planned them.

I supported the war against the Taliban in 2001. After the quick
victory, I thought there was a chance to make Afghanistan a much
better and fairly peaceful place. Was that a delusion, or was it
ruined by Bush's invasion of the country he had always wanted to
invade?

China has imprisoned people for talking
about the structural flaws of schools that collapsed in the
earthquake. And the International Olympic Committee made a deal
agreeing to censorship of foreign reporters' internet access.

The IOC strikes me as disgustingly hypocritical, pretending that it
will uplift humanity through an event which is really just
entertainment, and then making the event go by conniving at
suppression of human rights.

Sami el Haj, an Al Jazeera journalist held captive in Guantanamo for
six years, now campaigns for the release of other prisoners and the
end of torture. Here he describes
how he and others were tortured in Guantanamo.

The WTO negotiations have broken down because China and India (leading
many of the poor countries) would not accept
some US demands about power for the agribusiness megacorporations.

We should cheer this failure, because any agreement made now has to be
a change for the worse. Whatever the US and EU agreed to on 18
"resolved" issues surely gives more power to megacorporations, else
the US and EU would not accept it.

I don't hold any enthusiasm for Obama; at best he will be like Clinton
but even less liberal. However, systematic destruction of democracy
is dangerous even if there is no good candidate is likely to win this
year.

And you can be sure that if Obama loses because of this
disenfranchement, Democrat activists will blame it on the Green
candidate.

What's crucial here is that it demonstrates the way the Bush forces
always claim their victims were enemy fighters, regardless of the
truth. The story about a "misunderstanding" caused by the gun in the
car (surely a normal thing in Iraq) is not believable: the dead
driver's son was at the scene while the car was still burning, so the
Bush forces knew who they had killed before they had a chance to look
at what was in the car.

I suspect that the Bush forces admitted the "mistake" this one time
only because they feared alienating the other people that work at
Baghdad airport, and that this does not represent a change in policy.

This demonstrates once again that Obama himself is right-wing, but it could be
worse. Sarkozy is known for his draconian law which has made even the
possession of a copy of DeCSS a crime. I hope this doesn't indicate that
Obama will attack the freedom of computer users even further.

Nuclear reactor companies want government subsidies to build more
nuclear power plants, because they are far more expensive than safe
renewable electric generation or more efficient use of electricity.
They make no economic sense except as handout to the rich.

That makes sense, but I find it fishy to claim that Mugabe, who does
not shrink from murder and torture, would shrink from the wrong of
using a proprietary program without a license. He has already
committed the more grave wrong of using it with a license.
And if he doesn't fear that torture victims might sue him, how could
he fear that the developer might sue him?

It is the general practice of the Bush regime and its allies to issue
orders to silence people who can testify to the evil they have done.
Consider for instance the gagging of Mordecai
Vanunu in Israel (even though he has no nuclear secrets as such
left to tell) and the translator Sibel
Edmonds in the US.

It isn't explicitly clear whether the other bathers knew that the
girls were Roma, or even noticed that they were dead. But even if
they did, I think the scandal's focus is in the wrong place.

I don't see why it is obligatory to make a fuss about a stranger's
corpse. That won't help anyone, least of all the person who died.
The time that we have an obligation to pay attention is while the
person in danger is still alive. Someone did call for help, but did
others neglect that duty out of prejudice? If so, that should be the
real scandal.

The article understates the general situation which led to this. The
department of the "Iraqi" government which runs the prisons was (and probably
still is) in the hands of Shi'ites linked to the Badr brigades, and murdering
Sunnis was their aim.

There are reports that
Israeli fighters are landing in Iraq near Haditha as practice for attacking
Iran. The "Iraqi" government denies this, but you could hardly expect them to
be more honest than their master.

I see nothing wrong in foreign support for resistance against
the military rulers, even if its motive is amoral international
rivalry. But it looks like just enough to stir the pot, and
nothing that could actually help.

When the Israeli Supreme Court ruled to move the annexation wall away from the
lands of the farmers of Bil'in, that was the main victory for non-violent
Palestinian activism. Now
the government is making a mockery of the court decision, disregarding it
while building new colonies that it will later claim it has to "protect".

The people quoted in the article hesitate to denounce this as strongly as it
deserves. But since the Bush regime is already guilty of torture,
imprisonment without trial, and wars of aggression, we need not suppose that
things have to get any worse before regarding its power as a threat to
liberty. The US government is already Americans' worst enemy.

Such accusations are not at all absurd. Remember Nixon and Watergate? Perhaps
Sarko's men were behind this; but the question is why.

There was a clear motive for Nixon to send people to burglarize the Democratic
Party headquarters: knowing the opposition's campaign plans. Sarco defeated
Royal a year ago, so that motive would not apply. Is there another possible
motive?

I think that the UK made a serious attempt to convict Mousa's killers of
murder, and the failure reflects the fact that the system and the situation
make this very difficult to do.

The military occupation of a hostile civilian population will inevitably lead
to such events, and it will inevitably be hard to prosecute them. Therefore,
anyone considering ordering the military occupation of a hostile civilian
population ought to realize in advance that this is part of what will result.

A crusading judge has convicted some of the Italian fascist police
that attacked, injured and tortured sleeping protestors in Genoa. Now
the fascist government of Italy intends to make sure
they never go to prison.

It is callous and absurd for Russia to strike back at Bush by
punishing innocent millions in Zimbabwe that have never helped Bush.
However, Bush is also to blame for the provocation. Between these two
tyrannical regimes, there is little reason to prefer one or the other.

I wish it were true, but the Bush regime has an almost perfect record
of abolishing freedom and democracy in the US, and a very good record
of handing out money to his cronies. The 9/11 attacks might also be
one of its successes; sabotaging and corrupting the investigation
certainly was.

The US "terrorist" watch list now
has a million names on it, which means that millions of people are
likely to be harassed when they fly. But they can't be absolutely
sure of stopping every terrorist unless they put every person in the
world on the list.

Taking enemy soldiers prisoner is not wrong, but torturing them is;
and so is putting them on trial merely for fighting against soldiers.
While the Bush regime rejects all civilized standards for its own
behavior, it imposes ridiculous standards on its enemies. That's
"victor's justice", and would bring more shame on the US (as if there
weren't enough already).

The supposed threat of Iran is certainly a great thing for those who want to
distract Americans while picking their pockets of freedom. Iran is no threat
to the US. It could attack US forces in the Middle East, but since those
forces are engaged in an act of aggression, attacking them is not wrong at all.

A nuclear-armed Iran could theoretically bomb and destroy Israel, but Israel
could retaliate and destroy Iran, and I don't think the Iranian generals want
that outcome.

It would not surprise me if Iran's leaders really want nuclear weapons. The
twin examples of North Korea and Iraq show that nuclear weapons are the only
way for a country to be safe from the US. So they might want nuclear weapons
only for self defense. I would not put it past them to consider wars of
aggression. But they are not likely to attack Israel, which could retaliate
with its own nuclear weapons.

The policy is inconvenient in the short term, but maybe it makes sense.
Tobacco is addictive, so it is far more dangerous than marijuana. If the
coffee shops find a way to satisfy their marijuana customers without the
tobacco, they will remain successful, and this policy will prevent marijuana
from being a gateway to hard drugs. But if that doesn't work, I think they
should make an exception.

Israel said that it normally takes special care so that this won't happen to
journalists. This treatment is supposed to be limited to ordinary
Palestinians, who won't be in such a good position to write about it.

The EU's data protection rules are one of the best things it has done. At
that time, the EU had statesmen who looked at goals beyond increasing their
own power and the power of business. What a sad contrast is the EU of today.
Any change that it proposes today which affects human rights or democracy will
generally be bad.

When fighting against a guerrilla army, the US government standard practice is
to claim that anyone it kills in battle was an enemy fighter. Those claims
are meaningless; the US tactics inevitably kill many civilians. However, the
Taliban cares even less about them.

Our ability to monitor warming in great detail means there will be hundreds of
minor milestone moments. So it will be easy for the deniers to respond, about
each one, that it isn't important by itself. That's true, but the continuing
process they are part of can be fatal.

The Everglades are basically a broad shallow river full of grass, descending
gradually to the sea. Protecting it from direct contamination is the right
thing to do, but I'm worried about another pollution threat: salt water.
Global warming is making sea level rise. What's the elevation of the highest
point in the Everglades?

This deal makes sense, given that North Korea already has nuclear weapons, and
that it can threaten South Korea with great destruction even without them. I
won't criticize Bush for doing something that is right.

But compare this with Iraq. Bush gave three excuses for attacking Iraq:
developing nuclear etc. weapons, support for terrorists, and Hussein's
oppression of the Iraqi people. The first one was false for Iraq but true for
North Korea. The second was false for both. On the third point, Kim Jong Il
is far more cruel than Saddam Hussein ever dreamed of being. So if you're not
going to attack North Korea, why attack Iraq? Only oil.

Note also how removing North Korea from the list of "sponsors of terrorism"
proves that the list is dishonest. The change that North Korea is now making
in its nuclear programs has nothing to do with terrorism. So either there was
no reason for Korea to be on the list, or there is no reason to remove it now.
Clearly this list is just an "enemies list", an insult that the US government
makes against countries it does not like, and has nothing to do with the truth.

Bush, who has stolen two presidential elections, is no real supporter of
democracy. So the US support for democracy in Zimbabwe is probably motivated
by someone's greedy plan. But whatever it is, it can't be as bad as Mugabe's
terror regime. So we should be glad that, for once, this amoral giant is
doing something good. We should reserve our condemnation for when it does
evil.

Tsvangirai pulled out of the Zimbabwe runoff election, saying that
Mugabe's violence was too great. He will not ask people to die voting for him.

Some have criticized Tsvangirai for this decision, but I will not. There is a
level of violence at which peaceful resistance becomes impossible, and if he
says Zimbabwe has reached it, I will take his word for it. If foreign
pressure cannot force Mugabe out, I think armed resistance is called for.

It's not unusual for the Bush forces fighters to kill Iraqis. What's rare is
to have enough attention and evidence to build a case about it — most of
the time it was quietly forgotten. But even with attention and evidence, it's
no use. The treaty that Bush demands from the "Iraqi" government is designed
to allow this to continue.

Mbeki is also responsible for millions of HIV infections, due to his
persistent opposition to all the effective measures to prevent them. He also
supports the policies of the empire of the megacorporations. His existence is
a pestilence.

Command influence is a big danger in military "justice", because it is built
into the system. The judges take orders from the military command, and so
does the prosecutor, and so does the defense attorney.

I won't say that the improper meetings that occurred are ok; perhaps they were
a real problem. But command influence does not always manifest itself so
explicitly. The judge in this trial doesn't need to meet with Bush to know
that Bush would rather have the blame limited to as low ranks as possible.

I agree with Obama that the VA should respect the rights of experimental
subjects when treating veterans. But when he describes those who fought in
the occupation of Iraq as having "sacrificed...for our country", he
legitimizes an unjust war of aggression. This is part of why I do not support
Obama for president.

The first target of this censorship is sites and newsgroups that supposedly
contain "child pornography". This term is dishonest, since the law defines
"child" as "anyone under 18". For instance, Americans of age 16 are hardly
children. They are sexually mature, almost half of them have had sex, and any
normal adult will find them attractive. But our government calls them
"children", with the implication that being attracted to them makes you a
pervert.

The danger of censorship goes far beyond this specific instance of censorship.
Once ISPs agree to censor the Internet for one kind of thing, they can easily
censor other things. In effect, they have now constituted the Great Firewall
of the US.

Ireland's no vote on the European constitution-in-disguise is so uncomfortable
for Europe's leaders that they don't want to accept it.
They are trying to demand that Ireland must vote again and say yes this
time.

This resembles what Mugabe did after he lost the election.

This treaty in printed form was 269 pages long, thus almost
impossible to understand.

"Pro-government militias" under a military regime do not arise spontaneously
from public enthusiasm. They are organized by the government, and their
members get some sort of rewards or privileges. Thus, calling them
"paramilitaries" seems appropriate.

It seems to me that if the total amount that could be disposed of there only
equals 16 years of human production, this method is at best a stopgap. We may
have need for a stopgap as part of a real solution. However, today's
governments, subservient to the megacorporate empire, will seize on any
stopgap as an excuse to put off real solutions.

When so many governments around the world trample human rights to maintain the
control of the megacorporations over their countries, there is a large
population of people that have valid grounds for political asylum. Hence the
pressure on governments to deny asylum even to people that qualify, often by
denying plain facts about oppressive regimes.

At the same time, many people wish to move to Europe for economic reasons
— for instance, to escape the poverty that the megacorporate empire
spreads. It is legitimate in principle for a country to reject such migrants,
but this carries with it the duty to help those countries resist and escape
the harmful influence of the empire; for instance, to abolish the sweatshop
treaties which do the dirty work.

The sweatshop treaties are usually called "free trade" treaties, but that name
is dishonest. These treaties typically impose requirements for patents and
copyrights, requirements that restrict trade. The purpose of these treaties
is rather to transfer power from (possibly democratic) governments to
business. Thus, they are designed to reduce governments' power to control
business, and to in some cases to increase the megacorporations' power to do
so.

I hope he follows through on this. My only criticism is that he was willing
to entertain such negotiations in the first place. On trade issues, the EU is
just as bad as the US; any trade treaty that the EU of today is willing to
sign is surely harmful.

Canada's president apologized for the policy of forcing native children to
attend church boarding schools. Canada will pay compensation to the survivors.

The US had a similar schools policy, with disastrous results. (Many books
describe the strife that this caused in the Hopi tribe.) These schools, which
were designed for assimilation, must have played a big role in the loss of
many of the native languages.

Even if some of these projects are effective, I doubt they can overcome the
profitability of logging. So I think more is needed. I wonder if it is
possible to identify through biological tests which part of the world some
wood originated in.

Those who are debating the danger of unauthorized misuse are
being distracted from the bigger danger: authorized misuse,
by the government and its agents. Collecting data about people while
they are young gives the government a head start on total information
about everyone, and governments do not always use this information for
good.

Teachers don't need a database to recognize their students. If
schools need some of these data, they should keep only what is needed,
in a decentralized way, and discard it when no longer needed.

US Citizens: The Senate is making another attempt to
retroactively legalize
the phone companies' illegal surveillance. Phone your congresscritter, thank
the House for blocking this a few months ago, and ask him/her to do block it
this time too.

This would make it easy for the election administration to record how
you vote, delete your vote, change your vote, etc. The phone company
could do these things too, unless something I don't see prevents it.

Write a letter to the government of Afghanistan on behalf of reporter Sayed Kambakhsh, who is facing the death penalty for "blasphemy" for redistributing to fellow students a document he obtained from the net. In the UK, Hicham Yezza is also being punished for downloading information from the net.

Virgin's customers should cut off their service. But, more than that, this
shows that we must organize to loudly condemn and oppose the very idea of
stopping people from sharing — no matter how it is done.

The politicians and executives that support draconian laws against copying do
not expect to face widespread condemnation from the people they have attacked.
We need to teach them a different expectation. We need to show them that
anyone who attacks sharing will be considered the enemy of society.

Voters were right to distrust any treaty drawn up by today's politicians to
"reform" the EU. The EU needs reform, but they will try to make it worse, not
better. Most EU governments and politicians are subservient to business, and
any constitution they propose had better be studied long and hard for booby
traps. If it is hard to read, that is a very good reason to reject it. This
treaty in printed form was 269 pages long, thus almost impossible to
understand.

It is no surprise that these same politicians are trying to insist that the
constitution is not dead. They know what their bosses want, and they are very
persistent.

Mao was a disaster for China, so I am skeptical of anyone who calls himself
Maoist. It sounds like this movement is a lot better than Mao, but I do not
know enough to think about whether I could support it.

The failure to screen these body parts for diseases was a dangerous act of
negligence: it exposed people gratuitously to the risk of infection. This
should be punished. But the rest of what he did was not wrong.

This doctor saved, for the most meritorious possible use, parts of corpses
which would otherwise have been thrown away. Is that "plunder"? Relatives of
the deceased people claim to be "victims", but they are guilty of something
much worse: they sought to deny others needed medical care, apparently for no
reason except corpse fetishism. They deserve no sympathy.

There ought to be a law that relatives of a dead person who wish to veto
taking organs for transplantation must first have a face-to-face conversation
with someone that needs a transplant and is so far down the list that he
probably won't get one. He will ask them questions such as, "Why is burying
that heart (liver, kidney, tendon, whatever) in a grave so important that it
should keep me from getting the operation I need? Is something hidden inside
a corpse more important than a living person's health?"

Or just legislate that everyone's body is available for transplantation. I
don't think many corpses will object.

This means that (1) what's good for Afghanis is no longer the point, and (2)
NATO has adopted the Bush regime's attitude that it must never allow anything
to fail, because that would mean admitting fallibility.

The Bush regime prosecutors could not have failed to know that these
charges were unjust. I think they were implementing the regime's
arrogant attitude toward the public: "The Government Is Never Wrong."
Anyone who the regime accuses, even by mistake or through confusion,
must be convicted of something, by hook or by crook.

Grinding people down persistently for years often succeeds in crushing
them, innocent or not. It worked with Kurtz' colleague, who pled
guilty to some of the same charges that were now dismissed. It takes
physical stamina as well as mental firmness to stand up to the
pitiless attacks of an evil machine.

US citizens: Phone your congresscritter to support the Hinchey-Rohrabacher
amendment, which would stop the federal government from arresting
patients who are using medical marijuana legally under state law.

Marijuana is less dangerous than tobacco or alcohol, so it should not
be more illegal. This is just a first step, but it is an important step.

The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and 888-355-3588.

This shows that their real concern is not a matter of "right to life" for
embryos that have no brain, or fetuses whose brains are not yet wired up to
function. Their aim is to force everyone to live according to their perverse
religion.

Harvard Professor Matory reports on the censorship pressure that has
"disinvited" three visiting academic speakers who were known for supporting
the Palestinian cause. His faculty resolution to reaffirm academic freedom
was defeated.

I call it the "Israeli Hawks lobby", rather than the "Israel lobby", because
it represents only one side of Israeli politics, and does not represent all
Israelis or Israel's real interests. It is easier to oppose these hawks in
Israel than in the US where the Israeli Hawks lobby reigns supreme.

The law is likely to be blocked by the House of Lords, but this vote is still
a loss for Britain. It shows that Clown is determined to crush the last
shreds of the Rights of Englishmen.

It was predictable, after the compromise that extended pre-charge detention to
30 days when B'liar wanted 90, that the B'liar/Clown regime would come back
later saying "meet me half-way again". Compromise with fascists is
self-delusion; the only thing to do is oppose them.

To be forced to apologize and praise those who wronged her must have been
humiliating, and clearly was unfair, but what is more important is how it
affects the rest of us. This confirms the police's idea that they must never
be blamed for mistakes. If they make a mistake about you, that is your fault;
you should have known better than to do anything they might be confused about.

As long as police get away with blaming their mistakes on the victims, they
will continue to treat the public with contempt.

B'liar's first attack on the Rights of Englishment was a law making it
easy for any level of government to spy on people without a warrant.
This law was supposed to be for the sake of stopping "terrorism", but
in fact it is used for matters as small as putting out garbage on the
wrong day.

This same law makes it a crime not to hand over your encryption keys
on demand.

This extra cost is tiny (one pound of tomatoes is enough for probably 20
burgers) for Burger King; the fact that Burger King resisted so long and hard
is an indication of intends greed and callousness.

I read elsewhere that one of Ahmadinejad's supposed threats to destroy
Israel had been misinterpreted, and that his actual words were a
prediction that Israel would disappear sooner or later. Predicting
someone's demise is unfriendly, but it is not as bad as a threat.
Israel, which already has nuclear weapons, is the one that is doing
the threatening.

Since Mugabe is trying to use starvation as a weapon against the
opposition, any food aid not under his control tends to defeat that
tactic, and thus could be said to help the opposition. But there is
nothing wrong with that. The rest of the world should be giving the
opposition in Zimbabwe a lot more help, including military help. A
few divisions would suffice to make it possible to have a free
election.

It is interesting to compare this case with Iraq. Iraq was kept
hungry for 12 years by US-imposed sanctions, and did not have a real
internal opposition to Saddam Hussein. Yet Bush claimed his invasion
was meant to help the Iraqis. If he were really moved by such
concerns, he would have refrained from invading Iraq, and would invade
Zimbabwe now.

Mercenaries in Iraq are subject to no laws at all. If official
soldiers kill prisoners, they are subject to military justice. Even
though that is a parody of justice, biased in these cases in favor of
the soldiers, it is better than nothing. However, mercenaries in Iraq
regularly go unpunished even when they rape other mercenaries.

This is not mere history: the resulting injustice still operates
today, since China continues to suppress democracy in the same way.
All the more reason to keep the heat on.

To keep the memory of the massacre alive, we should stop calling that
place Tienan M&eacuten (gate of heavenly peace). If you are going to
Beijing, ask for directions to Sha Xuésheng Mén (gate of
killing students). The x is pronounced like "ch" in German "ich", the
acute accent indicates a rising tone, and the second and third e's are
pronounced like "u" in "put".

Readers have posted several comments on the article that express
extreme cynicism: "You can't criticize China since your country's
government is bad too." Such cynicism is made to order for despots in
all countries, since it sets a threshold for criticism that nobody can
meet. It despises humanity and gives up on making anything better.

Amnesty International is equally aware that every government can
violate human rights, and nearly all of them do. Unlike the cynics,
it aims to make things better. So it organizes pressure on every
country from people in other countries.

Lula's response was a distractive irrationality. There are plenty of
other scandals in use of oil and coal, but that doesn't address the
question; people can't eat them.

The problems with biofuels made from food crops have been published
for over a year now, as you can see from previous links here. Yet I'm
no expert on this field: all I did was keep my eyes open, which anyone
can do. So what can we say about politicians who have kept their eyes
shut?

Withholding evidence from defendants is the road to unjust
convictions. The other provisions sound bad too. The Bush regime is
in no position to criticize, but those who have opposed the PAT RIOT
Act and supported Chávez should implore him to drop this plan.

I have no objection in principle to charging
users for total bandwidth of downloads as long as it is done
without discrimination based on what is downloaded. However, someone
pointed out to me that this might lead more people to put passwords on
their WiFi. That would be a bad result.

It may be possible to avoid that result through neighborhood-based
campaigns urging people not to lock each other out. I wonder if there
are any unlocked WiFi activists in the area of Texas where this is
being tested.

If the bully were so stupid that he believed the cartoon robot could
actually shoot someone, it would be hard to be angry at him.
Someone so badly retarded is not fit for the job, but it's not his
fault that he is retarded.

However, what really happened is much worse. That bully was perfectly
aware that the cartoon robot could not shoot anyone. But he thinks he
should forbid it anyway, because he has lost all sense of proportion.

The whole idea is absurd, because even if the system works, what good
could it do? Whatever the crew could do to oppose a would-be hijacker
with a little advance warning, they could just as well do when he
starts to act. Only when there are armed police in the plane (and
that's a small fraction of the time) would the advance warning be
useful.

The article obscures some of the facts by using the vague term
"intellectual property". That term potentially refers to a large set
of diverse laws — but most places where it is used really mean
only one or two of them. We cannot tell which of these laws are
actually meant here, because the term hides that.

Even after 60,000 dead, the Chinese official's primary wish is to try
to deny and bury problems. That is why they were not corrected in the
first place.

The same thing occurred during the SARS outbreak several years ago:
Chinese officials denied the scope of the problem until that was
impossible.

It happened again a couple of years ago when a toxic chemical spill
menaced the water for a city. As long as this continues, the
inhabitants of China will have lousy government. So can Americans, if
Bush achieves his aim of making the US government follow the Chinese
model.

The Isreali representative thinks it is irresponsible to admit the
facts about Israel's nuclear weapons because that might lead people to
compare the international attitude towards possible Iranian nuclear
weapons with the international attitude towards actual Israeli nuclear
weapons.

The arguments offered to defend them show the insane frame of mind of
the security state: grasp at straws to justify whatever they do,
rather than admit being mistaken. That insanity is much more
dangerous than any non-state-sponsored terrorists.

Note how the Hay festival's response misses the point. Monbiot
attempted to arrest Bolton after his speech, thus respecting
freedom of expression. However, freedom of expression is not an
excuse for mass murderers to escape punishment for their crimes.

The US Congress voted to investigate the Pentagon Paid Propaganda
Pundit Program. The US TV networks, which were used by these
"military experts" to prevent propaganda for attacking Iraq, continue
to refuse to recognize it.

The prohibition of sharing can only be enforced with draconian
cruelty. This shows that prohibiting sharing is wrong.

The copyright companies keep asking for draconian cruelty, and
corporocratic governments keep proposing to give it to them. This
illustrates why corporocratic governments are unjust and their actions
are illegitimate.

The plans for "stabilization" of CO2 at levels such as 550ppm are
fundamentally impossible, since that level of warming would melt lots
of permafrost, releasing a lot more greenhouse gas. Thus, it is absolutely
essential to cap CO2 at a lower level.

Although that student has been released, the UK officials continue to
claim that this is an "illegal document" which you "should not send
to any Tom, Dick or Harry", in effect announcing their intention to
imprison people for what they read.

These tyrants are the real threat. Britons, don't let the tyrants
distract you by pointing at other minor enemies, while they attack
your freedom.

Of course, the companies pretend that the world will end if they are taxed at
all. But that's backwards. To let them have money with which to fund lies
about global warming is more likely to end the world.

This persistent dishonesty of the Chinese regime seems to be the model
for the Bush regime. These regimes continue lying because many people
believe the lies. China has fooled many Chinese about the Dalai Lama,
just has Bush has fooled many Americans about Saddam Hussein.

Both of these regimes manipulate people by appealing to their
patriotism, but loving your country does not mean loving or obeying
the corrupt, dishonest people that control it. Mencius pointed out
2500 years ago that such regimes have no legitimacy.

McCain happily
accepted the endorsement of John Hagee, who believes that Hitler
was divinely ordained to make Jews move to Israel to fulfill
prophesies. Hagee now wants Israel to get into a war with Iran, so as
to fulfill more prophesies, and end the world.

This sort of "friendship for Israel" might well cause more war. And
these insane Christians have been very influential over US policy
towards Israel under all recent presidents, the only exception being
Bush I.

Hagee's claim that the Catholic Church (at least at the level of the
pope) helped Hitler might be valid; it probably is based on the book
Hitler's Pope. It puzzles me, however, that Hagee doesn't consider
this a reason to praise the Catholic Church.

That is a good thing, since oil will get more scarce in the future.
High prices will motivate people to change their arrangements to use
less. Reducing taxes would mean trading society's present discomfor
for future agony.

Perhaps speculation is responsible for the current high price. In a
few months, who knows, it might be back down to $100 a barrel. But
looking at a period of years, oil will get more expensive, and people
will fly less.

So if your city is thinking of investing in airport expansion,
preparing for flights that won't arrive, make sure to prevent this
folly. Invest in conservation instead!

Many airports are not far above sea level. Expanding them is even
stupider.

I do not know whether the response to the earthquake deserves criticism, but
I've seen claims that schools collapsed while private buildings nearby
survived. Perhaps those schools were not built strongly enough to survive a
big quake.

Their definition of "terrorist" is much broader than yours or mine, but they
don't really need to believe these protest groups include terrorists. That is
just excuse is just cover for sabotaging protests.

The claim that "if you're doing nothing wrong, you have nothing to
worry about" is absurd in the US for many other reasons. Many
activities (sharing music, smoking pot, talking about US government
support for terrorism) are illegal even though they are not wrong.
And if you don't do any of them, many police and prosecutors will
happily lie to put you in prison if they consider you a threat to the
state.

I hope that this "cost/benefit ratio" is not limited to considering
the monetary cost. That would be tantamount to treating
government surveillance, which is easily used to crush protests and
dissent, as no cost.

As long as the rest of the world is afraid of a military confrontation
with the junta, it will tend to learn the twisted lessons that this
article seems to recommend. I think the lesson to be learned is
"Invade Burma". But that has to be part of a larger lesson, including
"Don't invade Iraq".

US citizens: call your congresscritter and say, "Don't vote any money
to continue the war." And if you support any senator as a
presidential candidate, call that candidate's office and say, "Don't
vote any money to continue the war."

The Capitol Switchboard numbers are 202-224-3121, 888-818-6641 and
888-355-3588.

Hamas has agreed to accept any treaty approved by a referendum of
Palestinians. True friends of Israel (like true friends of the Palestinians)
should pressure Israel to negotiate with Hamas, and pay the price for lasting
peace.

The way state-organized militias, supposedly fighting against the
guerrillas, clear off the people that live in areas where there are
resources to mine, reminds me of Colombia and its paramilitaries,
which supposedly existed to fight the guerrillas but actually stole
land from the peasants in places far away from the guerrillas.

Remember also how the Bush regime has accused lawyers and guards for
terrorist suspects of carrying messages for them? These charges were
laid for political purposes, and maybe the ones in India were too.

And doesn't India have a responsibility to provide medical care for
prisoners?

I support the proposal to deliver relief supplies in defiance of their
power, since they are in no way the legitimate rulers of Burma anyway.
If it is necessary to defeat the Burmese army in order to do this, so
much the better — then Aung San Suu Kyi could take office.

To suspect people of being terrorists because they take pictures is as
absurd as suspecting them because they breathe. Maybe the ferry boat
captain who photographed those two is a terrorist. You never know,
right?

This problem is small compared with the number of deaths of Bush
forces soldiers, which is itself small compared with the number of
Iraqis that the Bush forces have killed. But it parallels the general
attitude of the Bush forces towards a wide range of corruption.

Victory in this case will not eliminate the practice of restricting
how users run proprietary programs. It will only limit the developers
to using contracts as the means. This will not make users free. If
you want freedom, you must reject proprietary software and use free software .

Even as the EFF fights this attempt to stretch copyright power, it
perhaps unwittingly encourages future such attempts, through its use
of the term "intellectual property" to describe copyright.

That propaganda term is biased: it gives people the wrong idea of the
basis for thinking about copyright issues. In addition, it is
confusing: it encourages people to conflate copyright with other
totally different laws that raise different issues.

ASBOs mean that the local authorities can order people to stop doing
literally anything they don't like. If the victims don't obey the
order, they can be imprisoned, if if the activity is not a crime at
all.

This is obviously unjust, but not very effective at deterring unruly
teenagers, who consider the ASBOs a badge of honor. So now the
Minister of Police Power calls for further nastiness.

A UK police official justified allowing Chinese police
into London because otherwise China would have sent the
Olympic torch through another city. And he excused them
for punching protestors because it was a "natural reaction"
to possibly "losing face".

Does he believe that people in general are allowed to punch protestors
that make them lose face? Or is this a special privilege for Chinese
thugs only?

A principled UK government would have told China to take its thugs
elsewhere. But the Clown organization is not known for principle.

I think there is something more going on. The article talks of "old
1000-shilling notes." I wonder whether the US-imposed regime that
controls Mogadishu has caused hyperinflation, or tried for other
reasons to replace the currency.

The state powers described in this article do not seem controversial
to me, since in the US every state has them. At the same time, I
suspect that foreign oil companies have something to do with this, and
that somehow it is a scheme to keep the oil revenues in their own
hands.

I hope that the Democracy Center will provide a useful analysis of
this.

This is not the only way the US is nasty to foreigners. It takes
fingerprints of them when they enter the country, and for that reason
alone everyone should stay away from the US if possible.

It certainly is right to remove the heroes of the fight against apartheid
from this list. However, it sounds like this is just an example of a
broader problem. If even the Secretary of State cannot get them
removed, something very strange must be responsible. Does anyone know
what?

According to George Soros, the financial crisis is partly due to
right-wing ideology. Markets are unstable, and government
intervention is periodically necessary for them to work well for
society. But the US government regulators came to believe right-wing
propaganda telling them to place their faith in the invisible hand.

For KBR, Iraq is anarchy. Its staff take advantage of this by
operating the most outrageous rackets, such as looting, and selling
the Bush forces' weapons. The local managers support the rackets and
punish anyone that tells about them, which I suspect means they are
getting a share.

Folklore has it that military quartermasters, soldiers in charge of
supplies, also frequently sold those supplies. But I doubt that the
US Army gave dishonorable discharges to soldiers who reported such
crimes.

The mortgage crisis was fueled by fraud in which all kinds of participants connived.

Fraud is wrong, but I think that the responsibility of individuals for
this kind fo fraud is diminished by the fact that they were invited
and encouraged by the institutions that they were supposedly
defrauding. It would be legitimate to prosecute those who provably
committed fraud in exceptional degree, but we must hold the
institutions (ultimately the government) responsible for the overall
problem.

As part of Bush's War on Integrity, the EPA chief for the Midwest has been fired for doing her job.

The local Chamber of Commerce has been corrupted too. That's not
news, it's standard practice, but it's important to see how it
happens. Their reasoning is, "For the sake of local jobs, let the
employers pollute." If everyone accepts that, we won't have more
jobs, but we will have a lot more pollution.

Unlike the first Cold War, in which countries that respected human
rights most of the time opposed Communist dictatorships, this will
be a contest between two groups of brutal tyrants, both of which
deserve the opposition of all people of good will.

I think these evil regimes will use this Cold War as an excuse to
become even worse. Both sides will sponsor terrorists to attack the
other side, and then both sides will use the "terrorist threat" as an
excuse to further trample the human rights of their people.

If the US apologizes to the people of Iraq for conquering and
destroying their country, and to the people of Iran for overthrowing
their democracy in 1954, it would go a great way to reducing the
desire of Islamic extremists to practice terrorism against the US.
And if the US cooperates with Russia and China to develop alternative
energy sources instead of starting another Cold War, they won't be
victims of each other's terrorism. That is the way to be safe.

A couple of weeks ago I wrote that President Chavez had increased
Venezuela's food production. That is what I recalled from my first
visit there, but, more recently, price
controls have caused food shortages.

Although the paramilitaries pretend that their purpose was to oppose
the guerrillas, their main activity is organized crime. For instance,
they serve Coca Cola Company by
killing union organizers and their families.

They are also known for attacking villages to terrorize the
inhabitants into selling their land, very cheap, to people like Mario
Uribe. I heard one of the victims speak in Spain; he lives there,
sponsored by human rights organizations, because he would not be safe
in Colombia. There was no guerrilla activity near his village, and
the army seemed to close its eyes to the attack by the paramilitaries.

President Horrible (in Spanish it sounds enough like Uribe) gave the
paramilitaries an amnesty, whose effect is that they get to keep this
land that they extorted. People interpret the amnesty as intentional
aid to them.

I do not doubt that these crimes were organized by the state. The
evidence points that way, and there is no reason to find it
incredible. Even Nixon arranged burglaries, and Dubya is far worse.

When we condemn government surveillance, the usual response is that
"If you are not doing anything wrong, you have no reason to object if
we know everything that you do." That's not true under a regime that
might frame you or burn down your house if it doesn't like what you
are doing.

In regimes where the police do things like ship you to Syria to be
tortured, this is a threat to your human rights. Organizations that
oppose government policies cannot trust Windows — or any
non-free software, because users cannot tell what those developers
have done.

There are things in it I disagree with. Above all, the religion: I am
sure that an omnipotent, omniscient that allowed all the suffering and
injustice of our world would not deserve anyone's admiration. And I don't
believe such a being exists anyway.

Secondly, and much less important, I do not believe that the US
government produced HIV. Nobody in 1980 could have done such a thing;
even today, genetic engineering is nowhere near advanced enough.
Indeed, HIV has been found in tissues from people who died long before
that.

I do not condemn Wright for saying that, I just disagree with it. To
have made the AIDS virus would be only a couple of grades worse than
what the US government has done in Iraq, so I reject the claim that
the government would never do something so bad, but I don't believe it
did.

Meanwhile, I admire Wright's principal points regarding race (both
repentance and reconciliation), and regarding oppression and empire.
I'd rather have him as president than either of the Democratic
candidates.

The Ethiopian army occupies Somalia with US help. Ethopia's
government is a dictatorship that pretends to be a democracy
but imprisoned the leaders of the opposition — just the sort
of regime that Bush would love. I would hate to be ruled by the
sort of Islamist regime that brought stability and peace to Somalia
until the Ethopian conquest, but it is clear that the Bush-sponsored
occupation is even worse.

The governments that support the drug company positions are those that
serve as the national representatives of the megacorporations. Their
citizens would be very unhappy if they knew what "their" governments
were doing "on their behalf", but the government and the corporate
media hide it. And democracy has been corrupted and weakened to the
point where their wishes count for nothing.

I'm sure the troops that carried out the torture were a small minority
of the British contingent in the Bush forces. After all, only a small
minority of any army is directly involved in guarding prisoners,
and those who committed torture must be a fraction of them.
But this detail changes nothing about the government's responsibility.
It is an attempt to confuse and distract.

Apparently Israel finds it more useful to attack the Palestinians than
to end the missile attacks on Sderot which provide an excuse doing so.
Israeli authorities are aware of how rarely those missiles hurt
anyone.

Since the US government already uses malicious software to spy on
computer users, I am more worried that the US government will put
malicious features into our computers than about whatever Chinese
crackers may do to them.

Business is good at ting plausible lies, and has experts
available for hire to do so, and for convincing newspapers to present
a picture that supports them. Therefore, we must distrust all policy
arguments offered by business even if they seem superficially
plausible. Without an honest, independent investigation, we cannot
know whether they are true.

The Confederation of Immokalee Workers asks restaurant chains to pay a
tiny price increase for tomatoes to give the tomato pickers a substantial
boost in their poverty-level wages. Some have agreed, but Burger King
has refused.

British agents interrogated prisoners in Pakistan who were being
tortured by Pakistani guards. Some of these prisoners were then
shipped to the UK without extradition hearings, and arrested and
convicted of "terrorism". One must suspect they were convicted based
on confessions extracted by torture.

What the agents did was illegal, but the Clown regime will surely find
a ridiculous excuse not to prosecute them, just as it cites "privacy"
as an excuse not to admit the wrongs it has done. Its view is that
laws are tools of power over the public, not limits on what it can do
to the public.

Britons must defend themselves above all from the principal terrorist
threat, their government.

I don't think the author of that letter would commit suicide, or write
a "suicide note" implying doubt about the rightness of his cause. It
seems more plausible that someone (working for the Bush regime?)
murdered him and faked the note.

This shows clearly that the so-called "war on terrorism" is really a
war on each and every one of us. The frequent warnings for citizens
to "be alert" against the unlikely danger of non-state-sponsored
terrorism are meant as a distraction from the ever-present danger of a
tyrannical state. And the jittery trigger-happy state it induces
leads to real harm to innocent victims, as Star Simpson and several
others have discovered.

Each note starts with a date and a brief topic in parentheses. That
text is also a link to that note.
For instance, if the note
starts with "20 July 2003 (Iraq)" then you can link to it with
"https://stallman.org/notes/may-aug-03.html#20 July 2003 (Iraq)".